Induction heaters are often required to heat a defined bandwidth on a plate of varying thicknesses for bending the plate. In general, the heating of a strip or plate can be for annealing purposes, such as transformer steels, paint curing, tin reflow, bonding zinc and sink/aluminum alloys to the strip for control of corrosion in a galvannealing process such as for automotive body panels, etc. In the past, a solenoid type induction coil was formed around the plate in close proximity to the portion of the plate to be heated. However, solenoid type induction heating of plate workpieces suffers from several drawbacks. In particular, for thin plate workpieces, high induction frequencies are required to effectively couple to the plate. High frequency operation, however, may lead to overheating of edge portions and/or the surface of the plate workpiece before the core of the plate can get to temperature. Alternatively, transverse coil arrangements have been contemplated, in which the induction heating coil does not encircle the workpiece. These approaches have thusfar also suffered from edge overheating, and accordingly have not been widely adopted. Thus, there remains a continuing need for improved induction heating techniques for heating select portions of plate or strip type workpieces.